Liam Fox has claimed the crucial Dubai meeting with Harvey Boulter came about after a chance encounter at a restaurant. But emails obtained by the Guardian show Fox's friend Adam Werritty first met Boulter to plan the meeting in April.

On Saturday night, Boulter, gave the following account of his dealings with Werritty ahead of the meeting:

My first meeting with Werritty was in early April 2011 (don't recall the exact date) in the Shangri-la hotel in Dubai. We had about one hour together where I briefed him on Cellcrypt and the Acolyte litigation. He offered his assistance to help raise these topics to "the boss". At the end of the meeting he very quickly introduced me to Dr Fox who had just arrived in the lobby – it was a handshake only.

Over the next months he told me he had briefed the boss and he offered to set up an eventual meeting with Dr Fox to discuss the topics.

By chance we met again in Dubai, this time in a restaurant a few days before the 17 June meeting. We had after-dinner drinks together and at this time he offered to set the meeting we had discussed for the Friday following (the 17th). He said he would confirm time and location, I requested morning as I was leaving for Milan at around 2pm Friday.

The meeting was eventually set on 41st Floor, Shangri-la Hotel Dubai at 11am and lasted 45 minutes, with Cellcrypt taking the vast majority of the discussion time, affording only a short time at the end to talk about the Acolyte litigation, where we (Ploughshare, part of MoD) and Porton were at battle with 3M for closing Acolyte, a EU regulatory approved rapid detection technology for MRSA.